


Fast & the Furious: Vulcan Drift

by lousy_science



Series: Vulcan Drift [1]
Category: Star Trek
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fast and the Furious series - Freeform, Gangsters, M/M, Star Trek - Freeform, Street Racing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 21:15:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lousy_science/pseuds/lousy_science
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Kirk/Spock riff on The Fast and the Furious. Jim is an eager space flier trying to break into the underground drag racing circuit, filled with dangerous gangsters, fast ships, and a brilliant team led by a mysterious Vulcan. </p><p>Written for heeroluva  for her bid in help_queensland</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fast & the Furious: Vulcan Drift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).



 

The message came from Hector at 3am. Jim had been up, bug-eyed over a monitor, and the sound of the incoming alert made him twitch. Shaking himself out, he reached for the communicator.

 

“Jim here.”

 

He tried to sound cool, and not itching over with curiosity.

 

“You still interested in racing with us, rookie?”

 

Jim’s smile could have lit up the room.

 

“Sure am. Got a place free for me?”

 

“How far away is your ship?”

 

Doing the calculations in his head quickly, Jim came up with an estimate. Then he sliced two hours off of it.

 

“Seven hours.”

 

Hector croaked out a laugh.

 

“You’re either eager, or you’ve been sucking some transporter’s dick to get a prime position on their convoy. No rush, we don’t drop the flag until 2100 tomorrow.”

 

“Do I have a place, then?”

 

“We’ll see about that when your entry fee is in my account.”

 

“OK, OK, I’m sending it through now.”

 

Jim’s fingers flew over the keyboard, double-checking the amount and swallowing.

 

“This came up quicker than I thought.”

 

Hector’s shrug was practically audible. “Need new blood. Can’t have two teams racing each other all the time, boring for the spectators. You know enough to keep this on the down-low, right?”

 

“I’m not that much of a rookie, Hector. I’ll see you at the race.”

 

 

+++++

Beaming up to the space station platform, Jim Kirk quickly assessed the area. This was the coliseum, and though he’d studied the floor plans it was different to stand there and take in the electric atmosphere that made this dingy structure so exciting to stand it.

 

He was looking around a relic of an earlier age. The SS Clinton was a disused repair hoist for NASA that had just hung around, until it was sold off to private entrepreneurs. Over the next few centuries it changed hands several times, growing to around five times its original size but still dwarfed by the more popular air shuttle stations that took in tourists and business people. These days Hector co-owned the SS Clinton with his Ferengi partner, Kro. They had run this place as epicentre of the racing scene for five years, yoked together by a mutual admiration for high-speed space racing and the making of vast amounts of money.

 

The central hub was just ahead of him, a series of bars thronged with people who also, he knew, used it as an informal meeting place. Kirk looked at the thrumming crowd in the dim lighting. They always kept it dark to preserve energy, and, he suspected, add to the atmosphere of general seediness. Anyone with half a brain could work out what kind of joint this place was, and that tonight was going to be a big night here. The SS Clinton was the hub for all South Western American space ship drag racing, and tonight was the monthly meet.

 

He scanned the clumps of people. The gloom was split momentarily by the shine of a new engine part, brought out briefly to show a buyer, and crammed back away from grasping hands. Lots of strutting would-be gangsters walked around like they had weapons, though it was generally frowned upon to bring firepower to a race. Girls in skin paint and decals wandered around on high heels, usually trying to find customers for porn holos, which got traded here almost as much as spaceship fixtures and race paraphernalia. This was the kind of recreational space station that didn’t feature in travel brochures. Jim loved it.

 

Drag ship racing was a dangerous, borderline illegal, exclusive, and expensive hobby. It was as addictive as any recreation Jim had ever experienced, up to and including sex. Maybe not oral sex, but everything on down from that. It was his first time standing on a station platform dedicated to racing, but Jim had imagined this scene many times before. This was flipping the switch on his whole plan. This was ignition.

 

Trying to stay cool, he sauntered slowly around the perimeter of the docking bay. His baby was here – she didn’t look like much, but considering that he had only three months to get a ship up to specs, he beamed inwardly. Not many people had taken any notice of her, which had been the plan. The exciting stuff was under the hood, and Jim wasn’t giving anyone tours of her engine core without a very good reason.

 

“So you made it?”

 

Hector slunk up to him, looking the very picture of a shady businessman. He had been in the racing circuit for years, got in the game via his dad, and Jim could easily imagine that there had been generations upon generations of Hector Snrs living in the shadow of racing tracks, doing deals, only ever taking untraceable credits, with engine oil running in their veins. He was an insider, which was what Jim so desperately wanted to be.

 

“Yep, thanks for the invite. Who am I up against?”

 

Silently slinging a thumb towards the display board at the side of the viewing platform, Hector watched Jim’s eyes skim over the names. He would be in the major race, the money maker, after the usual amateur skirmishes and display-racing.

 

Which meant that Hector and Kro were taking Jim seriously as a flyer. A little knot of tension began to give in his back. He had bought most of his parts through them, which was a long, drawn-out process. It left him feeling more like a guy trying to woo a girlfriend than a pilot who just wanted to race with the big names. He had stuck it out, built his ship, and hustled to get on Hector’s notorious waiting list. It was the equivalent of slapping a bumper sticker on his racing ship reading _SUCK ON MY VAPOUR TRAIL_.

 

He was here to win, at best. To turn some heads, at worst.

 

New ships for the arena always gathered some interest, particularly ones with flashy mods. Drag racing space ships were just as colourful as their automotive predecessors hundreds of years ago had been. Like peacocks, Jim had always thought, the cocky racers tended to dress up themselves as much as their ships. It meant they got more attention before the race, although Jim had reservations as to how comfortable it would be folded into a tiny racing ship’s pilot’s chair in hot pink snakeskin PVC trousers.

 

The trousers belonged to one of the Ti’ran racing team members. Everyone in the scene knew about the Ti’rans, they were big players on the racing circuit; their ships always had the most expensive mods and brightest colours. But no one would mock a Ti’ran, given their notorious rumoured ties with Orion slavers and terrorist groups.  
Near the Ti’ran ships was a matte-finished vessel, one that attracted just as many spectators. The group working on it looked nothing like the PVC-clad mechanics hustling around the five Ti’ran ships, they were dressed in more casual clothes – save for a smoking hot Orion girl with red hair, currently soldering a circuit board while wearing a lace bodysuit and thigh-high leather boots.

 

Like every major player on the scene, she was in Jim’s dossier. Gaila. Part of the Mulciber team. They had one of the pole positions in the racing docks, and exuded energy and confidence. Everyone on this space station knew their name. The team was about a third of the size of the Ti’rans but just as notorious for racing at breakneck speeds and being on the shadier side of space regulations. Kirk was desperate to go over and check out their vehicles, but stopped himself. No need to announce his presence too soon – the racing should do that for him.

 

He started checking over his ship, feeling the buzz of the crews and spectators grow around him. The ships would soon be moved by Hector’s staff to the hatch where they launched from, while inside the station the crowd’s eyes would be flicking between the viewing window above the bar and the hand-held viewers specially jacked for the races. Each ship carried a temporary tracking chip which allowed anyone who had bought, begged, or stolen an entry code to see how each ship was holding up on the circuit. Jim had spent hours going over old race data and digging up as much information about the players on the scene as he could. Flyers developed individual styles, tricks and short-cuts which were quickly replicated among the wannabe flyers and the fans that couldn’t get into space racing, but played the sim games inspired by it. Space racing wasn’t exactly illegal, but neither was it the kind of hobby mothers wished their babies would take up. Game designers capitalised on that, and the Grand Theft Spacer sim series was even more popular than the official Fleet-licensed games.

 

Jim had beaten every level of those games. He had logged close to a thousand hours sim time over the last couple of  
years, had studied racing from every practical angle. He had raced on land vehicles and even in a couple of sim tournaments.

 

There were six other teams represented at this meet - right now, he knew far more about every one of them than any of them knew about him. Tonight’s job was to pique their curiosity a little.

 

Or a lot. Jim would take a lot.

 

+++++

The first couple of races were warm-ups, fly-boy show-offs doing flashy shit for the crowd, like spins and spirals, and the newest tech developments on display. Jim noted the Mulciber team’s latest innovation, a ship which could fasten on to another mid-flight. He’d never seen anyone develop a docking method using the ship’s entry hatch, allowing the flyers to swap-over during a circuit in a matter of minutes. Clever. Then when the ships went to disengage from each other, one flew backwards then fishtailed and soared off dramatically. Ships this small didn’t generally have that sort of manoeuvrability.

 

Jim was watching them from a viewer in the viewing platform far above the racers. His ship was parked in far from pole position, stuck next to a snotty young Z’r’zz’r who clicked hir mandibles at Jim’s smaller ship, Jim rolled his eyes in response and murmured something about seeing too many James Dean holos. The Z’r’zz’r just popped the collar on hir vintage-reproduction leather jacket, and he snickered at hir retreating back.

 

Kro buzzed each driver with the five-minute warning, and Jim’s knuckles tightened on the controls. In his mind, he looped over the functions of his ship again and again. Every gear setting, pressure gauge, core driver and his beloved, extremely costly, dilithium boosters. DIL-bs were essential for any pilot who wanted to be taken seriously, and they were most certainly illegal on civilian craft. Not that anyone gave a single fuck about that up here. All that mattered was speed, with the beauty of the flight path and an appreciation for the associated party scene coming later.

 

Half a dozen speed freaks from three different planetary systems started their engines. The fuels used were odourless, but the audience’s viewing platform would get filled with the scent of different ship’s signature vapours. Jim could hear the gasps from the crowd. Every second sim racer would be frantically writing code later on tonight to do it themselves by tomorrow, when the holos of the race were leaked to the nets.

 

A solid wall of white light welled up in front of the exit hatch. It glared brighter and brighter, and then at Kro’s honking signal, it blazed out to inky space. Then the Clinton’s dock was spitting out blazing space ships, deaf to the roaring of the crowds behind them.

 

Jim clung to the edge of the row of ships, not trying to pull ahead of the leading vessels in the first leg. The familiar feel of g-force pulling on his skin made his heart pulse in sheer joy, but his mind was on strategy. He had flown this circuit over and over in a simulator, but not even a holodeck could ever replicate this feeling. It was as close to being pure light, he thought, as close as he would get to being something beyond the limits of his body.

 

Hector and Kro’s Clinton circuit was simple, and potentially deadly. There were four satellites for the ships to wind around. Ringo, the first point, could be rounded by six or seven small ships going at close top speed, but to get to George required a sharp vertical ascent and the width of possible traffic narrowed from then on. The path between Paul and John was probably the hardest, technically, as it required a drop and sharp turn left. The final leg, from John back the Clinton, was known as the Memorial Path. Some good racers, and several mediocre ones, hadn’t ever finished the last quarter mile.

 

Aggressive piloting was required on the Memorial Path, where the ships coming out of Paul crossed the flight paths of the racers circling John. It meant firing at each other instead of just laying obstacles in each other’s paths. Every ship here had some weaponry, concealed on the ship’s bodies as much as possible to prevent other ships building appropriate defence shields. Few hits were ever fatal, 95% of deaths in drag racing came from collisions, but ships fired to fuck your ship up, and end your race. Confusing the other teams with vapour trails and flashing lights was also accepted practice.

 

Coming around the turn from Ringo and propelling his ship up to George, Jim nudged a few places ahead. Triumphantly blocking that bitchy Z’r’zz’r from getting in close to the tight curve around, he zipped through the fog of yellow vapour from the Ti’ran ship. Thanking his excellent radar equipment, Jim was thinking two laps ahead. The amount of times he had flown this route in a sim, he could do this part blind. He smiled as he reviewed the field. Now he was third, behind the Ti’ran _Trigger_ and the Mulciber’s _Vector_. From George to Paul, they all held position.

 

The purse on this race was 45,000 credits. Winner took all. It barely covered the start-up cost of storing and fuelling your ship, not to mention the cost of extras like DIL-b. But this was not a rich man’s sport, not like the races that got shown on intergalactic TV and were attended by several planets’ royals. Everyone in this race got there on blood and sweat and craft. Jim felt the jolt of the _Trigger_ ’s guns rocking his hull as they approached the turn for Paul. He lost a few seconds time, but pulled back up. His heart beat steadily, his mind flipping through possible strategies. Another second passed, and he made his move.

 

Jim let his ship hover for a moment at the _Trigger_ ’s seven o’clock position, just under its strongest set of guns. They were just about to clear Paul, when the Ti’ran flyer unloaded a burst of phaser-fire at where Jim had been, not noticing how he’d sliced underneath the _Trigger_ ’s hull and pulled into second place toward John.

 

The _Vector_ held a twenty second lead in first. According to Jim’s screens, the ship had its shields up against Ti’ran fire power, but there were no heat sources indicating return assault. Typical of this pilot, he had a reputation for being aggressive with speed, not force. Even Jim took a second to gape at the stunning twist out of John’s orbit the _Vector_ made, coming within a hair’s breath of the lagging Z’r’zz’r. The slower ship careened off course, while the _Vector_ ducked under the secondary Ti’ran racer. Only minutes remained until it would be back at Clinton.

 

Just John to go, and Jim could be there. He could taste it. “I have you,” he said out loud to his control panel, and activated DIL-b to flick him above John and into the final flight path. It was the last leg, and Jim was catching up. He could even make out some of the detail on the _Vector_ ’s paintwork. The SS Clinton hung ahead of them like the Emerald City at the end of the Yellow Brick Road. 45 seconds and the two ships would be neck-and-neck.

 

The collision spun Jim’s ship upside down. He gasped, body instinctually grabbing for oxygen, as his hands searched the controllers to right himself again. It was the secondary Ti’ran ship, he realised, as his altitude sensors gave him an exact read-out of how far he’d been pushed off course. The _Attitude_ was its name, the driver a cousin of the Ti’ran’s best flyer. They had sacrificed a few thousand credits in repairs just to drive Jim out of the race. His cockpit filled with swearing. The _Attitude_ joined on to the _Trigger_ and got towed back to the Clinton, while Jim was forced to call Kro and request a towing vessel. A cackling laugh came back down the comm line.

 

“Great show you gave us. We’ll edit that footage onto our blooper holo – The World’s Most Stupid Flyers. Volume six is already available for pre-order!”

 

“How long until the tow?”

 

“Oh, I don’t know, flyboy. You look so pretty hanging there, with your pathetic broken wing. Made some of the girls here shed a tear or two. By the time you get back they’ll be screen-printing t-shirts with your face on it. Might get a sympathy lay.”

 

Jim’s jaw ached with the angry response he bit back. He didn’t want to piss off one of the guys who could pull him from future races.

 

“How long?”

 

The cackling returned. “Fifteen minutes. Gotta enjoy the winner’s celebrations back here. I hope your viewer still works.”

 

It did. Jim sat in his suddenly tiny ship, a silver scrap on the edge of the race circuit, unable to do anything but float along with the collision’s impact, still slowly pushing him further away. The tow ship’s flight would take minutes, but he knew how it always went for flyers left stranded after a race – Kro and Hector would let him sit still and seethe unless there was a medical emergency.

 

The viewer shone with pictures of the pilots who made it back. The Vector was already hoisted to the centre of the bar, instantly draped with flowers and girls. The Mulciber team were milling around it, wearing shit-eating grins and slapping each other’s backs. The screens behind them were replaying the race’s highlights over and over, and everyone looked drunk and happy. Except for the pissed-off looking Ti’rans huddled in the corner, and the pilot of the _Vector_ , a figure Jim had studied online for over a year, but never met. The head of the Mulciber team, in his trademark all-black clothing, was hanging back from all the fuss. Jim struggled to make out the expression on his face, the Vulcan features betraying nothing that he could sense, except, possibly, a feeling of deserved triumph.

 

Spock was looking beyond them, to the stars.

 

+++++

 

Pulling his ruined ship around to the back of docking bay on one of Hector’s loading hoists, Jim looked up as the lights ahead started to flutter on and off. This was intergalactic code for _bad shit is going down_.

 

He strained to hear the discussion. Not much he could make out from the loud shouting – the flashy gang kids from earlier, he assumed, the accent certainly sounded like the Ti’ran’s mix of Terran Californian and the tones of slangy Standard picked up on the grottier edges of the galaxy. Suddenly it was on the move, as the squabbling group came around the corner. Jim quickly counted eight of them, all named in his dossiers, all Ti’ran gang members of varying ranks, including Cheviim, their lead driver and alleged gang boss. Someone else was there, too – on the edge of the group loomed Spock, who was discussing something in quiet tones with Cheviim. Neither of them looked happy.

 

“Ah! Here he is. The latest wannabe turned flake-out. How did it feel, puny human, to be tossed around in space like so much asteroid debris?”

 

These guys were rapidly getting on Jim’s nerves. He turned and leaned back on his mangled ship, with all the pride of a victorious racer, and smiled at them.

 

“Felt pretty good to pass you on the final legs. Guess you took it hard, huh? And as for him – ” he indicated Spock, “I almost had him. The _best_ racer in the game. Not too bad for a rookie, some may say.”

 

The Ti’ran juniors ran through a medley of insults, while Cheviim had his interest sparked. He addressed Jim.

 

“Some may say that, rookie. But not anyone who knows anything about racing.”

 

He advanced on Jim, who held his pose, refusing to give an inch to this mug.

 

“Anyone who knows anything about racing would say, all that counts is who is on the winning line. The rest – so much space dust. Not even the wind to pick you up.”

 

Jim rolled his eyes. If he wanted cheeseball lines like that, he’d still be at the Academy with Bones.

 

“Do you have anything to say to me, Ti’ran? Because I have a ship to repair, and some races to win.”

 

Cheviim reared up, nostrils flaring out. His eyeballs were bloodshot, tinged with green – Jim belatedly recognised the effects of amphetamine use. This might get ugly.

 

“You act so cocky after one race, slimeball? Why don’t I make it more interesting for you. I got your ID off of Kro. James  
Rivers. Well, Rivers, you just try to get on any race going in the next six months, I will make sure you can’t get in so much as a soap box rally.”

 

Jim stepped forward to bark into Cheviim’s face.

 

“The hell you say. What, scared of a little competition? Think I’m that good, huh?”

 

Cheviim waved a hand dismissively at Jim’s ship.

 

“That heap of junk you fly needs replacement Humphries curves and I bet it runs with D’rros plugs. You want them, it’ll cost you plenty. But you got spirit, Rivers. How about I offer you a deal – one race for me, a full refit for your junkyard ship here.”

 

Jim wanted to step back with surprise at the offer. But he held his ground.

 

“Why on earth would I race for you?”

 

But Jim’s mind was whirring with his new options. This was just the sort of in he had bet on, the blunt cockiness of a group like the Ti’ran covering up their interest in his skills. He thought it would take longer than this for an offer. It would take a lot more squabbling, and he might have to punch out a few punks to earn his spot, but –

 

“He will not race for you.”

 

The Ti'ran flyer spun around, eyes narrowing at the speaker. The voice was low and authoritative, the complete opposite of Cheviim’s petulant tone.

 

“What would you have him do, Vulcan? Keep up these penny ante races, keep getting bulldozed by the likes of us? Who asked you anyway?”

 

“Mr. Rivers will be racing again. For Mulciber. I suggest you take your team and leave, as you have no more business here.”

 

Cheviim curled his upper lip, clearly ready to keep fighting. But the lights flickered more, and Hector’s voice boomed over the comm system.

“Code 48, kids. Get your rinky-dink asses packed up and off of my station.”

 

Customs patrols. Usually no more than a mild pain in the racer’s ass, but they would insist on holding everything up and scanning for contraband. The Ti’ran hustled off in a raucous clump.

Spock was still standing back from him, so Jim quelled his desire to gawk at the flyer and turned to begin packing up his vehicle. Once it was ready, it would go to Hector’s storage unit, where it would get transported back to Earth the next day. Jim was due to beam down to California right after he’d loaded his ship back on the hoist. There wasn’t much he could do for her right then, but his still kept his back to the Vulcan and petted his ship’s twisted hull.

 

“You are registered under the name Rivers.”

 

“That’s me. Last name Rivers, first name Jim.”

 

He turned and extended a welcoming hand to Spock, who looked at it like it was a rusted fuel engager. Jim shrugged, kept on in a calm manner.

“I can fly anything you give me – G-class through to J, DIL-b boosts, one seater or hundred. Can forward you some of my sim flights, I’m ranked top five in the Cali nets – the under the radar stuff, not the official game ranks. Keep myself out of trouble.”

 

“I am not looking for another flier, Mr. Rivers.”

 

“What do you want then, Mr...?”

 

“Spock. I want a ship that can turn from two race points to the last leg in ten seconds. Your ship…does not look ready for that. But your friends the Ti’ran undoubtedly would make it so. I do not want that.”

 

“Spock, I can make her into a ten second ship. You got a garage? Oh, and they’re no friends of mine.”

 

“That is good to hear. I do have a garage – it is under my team name. I expect a flier as accomplished as you will be able to find it. Be there tomorrow at eight hundred hours.”

 

“I will. And – thanks. I know who I’d rather race with. It’s good to meet you.”

 

Spock just nodded sharply, and turned to walk away. Jim had a lingering feeling that he had just gotten played.

 


End file.
